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Jerusalem. For centuries, people have prayed, hoped, and died for this patch of earth. Jews, Christians, and Muslims gaze up at the same sky while beating each other’s heads in on earth.

Lessing sends his Nathan to this city in the midst of the Crusades with a monumental task: to believe in humanity despite everything in this world of old scores and stone-hard boundaries. Nathan tries to mediate between the religions. And he is asked that fateful question, behind which lie centuries of violence: Which religion is the right one?

For nearly 250 years, NATHAN THE WISE has stood for the great promise of the Enlightenment—for tolerance, reconciliation, humanism, and hope. In 1779, Lessing wrote this fable as a rebuke to a world of dogmas and religious barriers. Today we know: The promise of the Enlightenment offers no protection. Between Lessing and us lies the history that has pitted the darkest counterarguments against the ideas of the Enlightenment. The 20th century has shown that education does not protect against barbarism; reason itself becomes its tool.

The aufBruch touring ensemble—composed of former prisoners, parolees, and an actress—re-examines Lessing’s vision of peaceful coexistence on the Gustav-Böß Open-Air Stage in Jungfernheide. For Lessing’s fairy tale of the equality of all people is drifting ever more painfully into the realm of utopia. Religious and political conflicts are raging across the globe; anti-Semitism and racism are on the rise; people are entrenching themselves behind their origins, nations, and faiths. His trust in reason sounds almost brazen in this context. But a fairy tale does not describe the world as it is. It holds up a different one in its place. It shows that things do not have to stay the way they are.

Therein lies the extraordinary nature of his play. People carry their stories and wounds with them—and their old grievances—into the future. They erect boundaries between themselves and call them truth. Yet Lessing disagrees: Human beings are shaped by their history, but they are not doomed to be its executors. Origin is not destiny. Pain is not a mission. Between what has happened and what will happen stands a human being—and with them, the possibility of a decision.

The play will be performed by a mixed ensemble of day-release prisoners, former prisoners and an actress:
Abdul, Adrian U., Ali, Juliette Roussennac, Matthias Blocher, Max Sonnenberg, Mohamad Koulaghassi, Özcan, Para Kiala, Pierre, Steffen, Sven-Eric.

Director Peter Atanassow Stage design Holger Syrbe Costume design Elena Chant Dramaturgy Franziska Kuhn Musical Coaches Vsevolod Silkin, Jens-Karsten Stoll Choreography Suzann Bolick Production management Sibylle Arndt Assistant directors Kirill Semenkin, Moritz Waldthaler Costume assistant Jooeun Lee Graphic design Dirk Trageser

Tickets: 18 € / 12 € (reduced)

Ticket sales from Saturday, August 22 2026 at 11 am

Information on tickets and conditions of attendance

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Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfond and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.
In cooperation with Kulturbiergarten Jungfernheide, JVA OV Berlin, JVA Tegel, JSA Berlin and the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf District Office.
aufBruch is supported by the Association of Friends and Sponsors of Prison Theatre in Berlin e.V. and numerous private donors.